The Lord Bishop of Winchester: I am grateful for the speeches we have heard, in particular, for those of the noble Lord, Lord Alton, and the noble Earl, Lord Howe. I want to go the whole way with the noble Lord, Lord Alton, in his amendments. I regret not being able to be present at Second Reading or yesterday, but that has given me the opportunity of reading the Second Reading debate, yesterday's debate and the preparatory material all at one go. That prepared me to speak now.
	I am not convinced by my friend the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, who turned the question about instrumentality upside down. That seemed not subtler than I could follow but subtler than is acceptable, but he and I have found ourselves in that position before and he will not be surprised at that reaction.
	On asking the Government for clarity about "other tissue", it seems to me that the phrase is precisely designed not to be clear but to be broadly inclusive. I should be surprised if the Minister is able to offer us any clarity about it.
	The noble Lord, Lord Alton, spoke about gut feelings. I want to put those into words, as the noble Lord, Lord Alton, would have been able to do, but he had much else to say. Those gut feelings are very widely held. Noble Lords will, like me, have had a lot correspondence on this issue and will know that this is one of the points on which gut feelings have been widely expressed. The view held by the high-church atheists mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Patten, is widely held whether by those of Christian or other faiths or none, but I shall put it in Christian terms.
	At least from the implantation of a fertilised embryo we are a unique character for others, for society, for our maturing, enjoyment and fulfilment, and for God. We grow into the fullness of that unique character in the context of our parents, which is relevant to some of the later clauses in the Bill about fathers, and then under an ever-widening range of influences throughout our lives and, I should say, beyond. It is an archetypal human right that we are that unique character for those purposes. It is our responsibility first as parents to defend that right around our children and for them, then it is society's responsibility to do so and society, in this context, includes Parliament and the medical professions. If that picture of what it is to be human and of humankind's responsibility for human individuals is valid, the picture of saviour siblings as imagined in the aspects of the Bill that the noble Lord, Lord Alton, is seeking to remove, or to amend if removal fails, is fundamentally at odds with the picture I have painted.
	Enabling the collusion of parents—whom I have suggested have major responsibilities to defend and sucker the growth of the infant into maturity—in making this individual an instrument, making legal the engagement of the medical professions in such a creation of instrumentality and the lack of choice in being a donor but being an instrument, is a fundamentally serious thing to be doing, and, in my judgment, a wrong thing to be doing. I say that understanding, to the extent that outside the situation one can understand it, the urgent desire of parents with a desperately, chronically, perhaps even terminally sick child to find any means of approaching this situation, and the perfectly respectable and laudable wish of clinicians, if they may possibly, to assist them to do it. It still seems to me that Parliament would be wrong to allow that. For that reason I support the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Alton.